I remember meeting my first post operative transgendered lesbian couple during SF Pride about 10-12 years ago. I had a hard time wrapping my head around it initially. Then after hanging with them for a few hours, I just got it. Some people will say it's silly or stupid, but after meeting them, it all makes sense. I don't understand what combination of neurophysiology and/or psychosocial development got them to that point, but I do know that if they were trying to be anything other than lesbians who just happened to be born men, they wouldn't be their authentic selves.

That's oftentimes the hardest thing to understand about transgendered persons. Your mind wants to label them in reference to their original physical birth gender. People will often wonder. "Okay, he was a guy, now he's woman and he's into guys, does that actually make him gay?" When I met my first MTFs (long before the MTF lesbian couple), I had similar questions, but as I got to know them, their gender identities really solidified in my mind and it became impossible to think of them as male in any context. Sometimes you can approach things with an open mind, but it takes a real life experience to truly "get it".

So you have a guy who grew up as an all american bloke, was a member of the boys club, and so on, and now he has decided to look like a women. Sorry I can understand why many women would not welcome this man into women only clubs, and so on. Because they have spent their whole life as women. Starting life as little girls, and being treated as one. To little women to young women. to adult women. It's just not the same.

Just as it's not me being born a male, growing up as a little boy doing boys things, becoming a young man, and being a member of young men's clubs. To becoming a man. To some-one in their 20s or 30s haveing operations, and having injection to look and sound like a man; it's just not the same.

I once cared for a guy with a mental illness who thought he was God, looked like God, dressed like God, and in his head he truly thought he was God. Should all churches hand over their funds to him? I don't think so.

Don't get me wrong. if the person can afford to pay for this procedure, and fund a life of injections, fine by all means do it, medical science have the ability to create the illusion. So long as it's nut funded by taxes> have no issues, and if it does, then I certainly have a right to an opinion, coz I'm helping fund it.

But I wish them no harm. I just don't think all doors should be open to them, as trans have clubs, where the door are not open to me.

I saw Prodigal Sons last year when it played at the Frameline film festival here in SF. The story is powerful and complex and subtle; I'd highly recommend renting the documentary. At least from the ad, it looks like Oprah is going the early 1990s Ricki Lake "she used to be a he! isn't that shocking?" route.

That's oftentimes the hardest thing to understand about transgendered persons. Your mind wants to label them in reference to their original physical birth gender. People will often wonder. "Okay, he was a guy, now he's woman and he's into guys, does that actually make him gay?" When I met my first MTFs (long before the MTF lesbian couple), I had similar questions, but as I got to know them, their gender identities really solidified in my mind and it became impossible to think of them as male in any context. Sometimes you can approach things with an open mind, but it takes a real life experience to truly "get it".

Pattison saidBut I wish them no harm. I just don't think all doors should be open to them ...

djohn767 saidThat's just nasty

It's in our nature to fear what we don't understand, but you don't have to loathe it. Why not look at this from the p.o.v. of a gay man? I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who view what you do and who you are as being nasty.

Your don't have to agree with it, but it wouldn't hurt to accept the fact that the world doesn't revolve around you.

Free your mind. It makes life a lot easier, less stressful, and far more interesting.